Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:27, 8 July 2005

The text for my front page was shamelessly parodied from the
Foster Parents Plan.

Stigma

Some Wikipedians have a tendency to 'brand' other people as 'inclusionist' or 'deletionist', usually for the simple reason that they disagreeing with that person. The connotation of both words is that of a derogative for someone who doesn't think before voting - and the implication of that is that the accusing party can't think of a logically sound reason for disagreeing.

I strongly object to this kind of factionalism. People should discuss, not polarize. I am occasionally branded as a 'deletionist' because of my opinions on VfD, but this is not grounded on reality. People who think otherwise are encouraged to look at my user page, and my role in establishing the semi-policy WP:FICT, which basically calls for keeping or merging of all fancr?ft.

--Radiant

Leave a message

This is Radiant's answering machine. Please leave a message after the beep.

Note that I do not keep archives of my talk page, as the history option suffices for that. I occasionally remove threads from there when they're no longer pertinent.

Bot ideas

• archiving RFC
• sorting Category:To Do into Category:To do, by priority
• removing all old deletion templates (Template:VfD-1 E16 km2 through Template:VfD-Über)

Smile

Greetings radiant

Just online doing some work and thought i say hi to you and hope you have a blessed weekend, keep up the great work you are doing here

love and light --Sparklelight1 01:03, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Association of Mergist Wikipedians

Hi, Radiant! I saw that your signature links to the meta:mergism page. Have you noticed that the organizer of the AMW, Reene, has apparently left the building? She hasn't contributed since mid-January, and an entry in her LiveJournal states that she's pretty much done with Misplaced Pages. Joyous 22:51, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Information does not want to be alone I love that phrase; it should be the AMW's official slogan. I don't understand why more people don't seem inclined toward mergism (whether they officially join an "organization" or not). There seems to be some sort of status attached to having created a separate article, rather than expanding an already-existing one. Bad bad bad. Joyous 23:12, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for dropping me a note! The minor character proposal looks great, it's exactly what I was hoping for. Joyous 12:12, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Stockroom VFD

"... it is generally assumed that if you (or your company) are famous, someone else will write an article about you." Nicely put! FreplySpang (talk) 17:46, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments

Thanks for your input at Misplaced Pages:Countdown deletion. Since there have been few enough people, I can afford to thank them individually, and who knows, maybe it will get picked up by others eventually... wait a minute, am I spamming talk pages? How the mighty have fallen... except that I was never very mighty... Anyway, JRM 10:52, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

Factions

Thanks. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "factionalize". Consensus is impossible when we have these two factions feeling free to "get out the vote". --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:53, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet Definition

Your addition looks great. Thanks for that – I had always assumed there was something on that page regarding VfD specifically; now there is. android↔talk 21:41, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

vfd

You're totally right, and actually I had had that thought, but I wasn't entirely sure, as a matter of logistics, how that would be achieved. Thanks for fixing! · Katefan0 19:58, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Introduction templates

FYI - I updated a message on the Introduction templates talk page - let me know if you think that sufficiently describes their purpose - I also added the sub (or inserted) templates that are used Template:Intro, Template:Intro/selected, Template:Intro/unselected, Template:Intro/1, Template:Intro/2, Template:Intro/3 and put a message on them as well. Have a good day Trödel|talk 20:50, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Excellent work...

... at first I thought, "Oh no!", but then I realised categorising substubs as specific stubs. Keep up the good work! - Ta bu shi da yu 07:45, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

VfD/PC

Thanks for advising me of the state of Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus. I could not tell from the internal evidence. Good job on maintaining the policies. --Theo (Talk) 08:13, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Mergification

(I just made up that word: impressed?) I think that trying to make people more aware of the mechanics/benefits of merging is a fantastic idea. I'm constantly amazed at how many editors nominate something on VfD, saying "I think this should be merged with that." How much of that, I wonder, is caused by those who don't realize that one of the steps of a good merge is to create a redirect on the now empty page? Joyous 22:04, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Mergism! Great start.

Thanks for the ping. Good start on the article; I'll try to give it a once-over, but Michael will as well. I love the notion mergism; that gets it exactly right.  :-)

+sj + 20:19, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Why no links?

I tried to e-mail you so I wouldn't have to ask this in an open forum, in case you had reason not to advertise your subpages, but you haven't chosen to enable the e-mail option. So... You have some interesting pages in your userspace, but no pages link to them. Would you mind if I made a (tiny, not-so-obvious) link from my user page to your subpage about VfD? That page is one of the most concise, yet complete, guidelines for VfD that I've seen. Would you mind if I also directed new users to that page? Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 06:20, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Categories marked for Wiktionary

I remember a while ago asking that you help to deal with the categories you marked for transwiki. I believe you did this for "English words", but four remain. What you need to do is go through them and mark the appropriate dicdefs for transwiki. I'll have any number you mark done tomorrow. Then, presumably, you can list the categories for deletion, of it's proper. The categories I'm talking about are Category:Given names, Category:Lists of words, Category:Names, Category:Vocabulary and usage stubs. Thanks. --Dmcdevit 07:57, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Now that I reread your response, I thought I'd let you know there isn't really a "transwiki team." There's just me (and a little bit of Uncle G). Would you like to form the team with me? :) --Dmcdevit 05:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, I don't need any help doing the actual transwikiing, but look at the transwiki log. It's in desperate need of help. (And clearingup those categories). --Dmcdevit 19:38, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ontmoeting

goed idee, als je mensen in die categorie zou willen uitnodigen, graag :-) groetjes, oscar 14:41, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

List of new categories

Would a list of new categories from between 2005-04-21 and 2005-05-06 be useful, or should I wait until the next dump? By the way, I'm curious what you're going to use the list for. Anything new and exciting? -- Beland 10:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for deletion info

Thanks. There are so many pages there that are candidates for deletion, merging or moving to Wikibooks (recipes). If I consider too long, then no time remains for action. I am aware of the points you made and I am learning more by looking at how more experienced members handle this (very curteously). Iani 15:14, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your resolution of the Misplaced Pages:Spoiler warning conflict. Although I would prefer a peaceful resolution, Netoholic seemed to be asking for enforcement. - Sikon 04:34, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Draft vs drafts

In the title of a page, you need to capitalize, because it's the name of the event. But when they become plural, the capital letter comes off, as far as I know. --Dryazan 12:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't think Glendale train crash is a good example; much better one is 2000 NBA Draft, and that is how you will see that capitalized everywhere (and same with MLS). But you know, since Category:NBA Draft is capitalized, I can live without caps on those categories. I'll remove the request. --Dryazan 13:01, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

CFR: Canadian history

Should we put up an RFC on this matter? It sounds rather wikiwide important. Radiant_>|< 10:24, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Feel free if you want. We are supposed to do that anyway if the issue isn't resolved on WP:CFD in the normal time alotted, and this situation is pretty close to that. -- Beland 20:16, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

VFU thanks

Thanks for undeleting the BBC North West Today weather game. Do you think that this is one of the situations where I can just go ahead and undelete it without bringing it to VFU at all? Sjakkalle (Check!) 28 June 2005 08:06 (UTC)

Catgory:Women composers and other female categories

Hi. I'm wondering where I can find the policy you refer to in your posts concerning Misplaced Pages not promoting gender bias? I'm not being sarcastic here, I'd really like to read it. Of course I don't agree with it, but if that is the policy then that's the way it is. Also note that besides categories there are "female" lists, such as List of female composers. Karol June 28, 2005 16:53 (UTC)

Netoholic

Netoholic and I had a long conversation tonight - see this. Now, specifically, he wants you to "cut him some slack". I can tell you that Netoholic means well, but he tends to go about it the wrong way. →Raul654 June 29, 2005 01:11 (UTC)

• Thanks anyway, at least for the answer — I was just looking for a good scan for literary awkwardness, typos and as my spelling is occasionally humorous (If I could just see the flaw!).

Template:coolmerge

I used your favored version of the merge template. Whether it really is too jarring to update all page's use of the template is a question I will not try to answer. But when I saw those two arrows at kana entry I was really pleased and impressed. I hated to go back to the text version.

Anyway, your version has politer text in it. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 30, 2005 01:25 (UTC)

Admin help

<admin help>The template, {{transwiki}} was recently deleted per TfD. I think the the category that it populated, and is now empty, Category:Misplaced Pages articles to be transwikied should be deleted as. That's common procedure, right?</admin help> Anyway, thanks! --Dmcdevit 30 June 2005 04:43 (UTC)

Ah. You're such a brilliant, bright, beaming, shiny, er, radiant admin! Good night. --Dmcdevit 30 June 2005 07:42 (UTC)

A question

Hey Radiant, since you're one of the polciy consensus gods, why aren't Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus/Conclusions and the concluded topics guidelines or policies? I was citing one in a VfD today and was surprised to see it wasn't policy. Isn't that the whole point of the discussions? If we have consensus, that's what a policy is. Anyway, just wondering what your input would be. PS, you might want to check out #'s 72-83 on your table of contents on this page. --Dmcdevit 1 July 2005 23:33 (UTC)

Undelete of template

Thank you for promptly restoring the template. :) --Cool Cat 3 July 2005 05:00 (UTC)

"Merge" template voting

I've set up two separate votes on the "merge" templates' discussion page. One pertains to the templates' wording, and the other pertains to the templates' visual design. Users may vote on neither, either or both of these issues.

Please note that I've posted this invitation on the talk pages of everyone who has expressed a preference for either wording and/or visual design. —Lifeisunfair 3 July 2005 19:49 (UTC)

Kindly do not use your sysop rollback in a content dispute . Also, editing a protected page to engage the dispute for which it was protected is quite contrary to the protection policy. — Dan | Talk 3 July 2005 22:57 (UTC)

According to that policy, violet/riga should not have protected the page:

"Admins should not protect pages which they have been involved with (involvement includes making substantive edits to the page or expressing opinions about the article on the talk page)."

And if the page should have been protected, it first should have been restored to the version for which twice as much support had been expressed.

I also don't know why violet/riga didn't protect the {{mergefrom}} and {{mergeto}} templates, which are involved in the same edit dispute. (I mentioned this fact on violet/riga's talk page.) —Lifeisunfair 4 July 2005 00:34 (UTC)

I notice you blocked Netoholic as well. This is a particularly egregious policy violation, since you too had participated in the edit-warring on the merge templates. — Dan | Talk 4 July 2005 02:31 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Templates

re: your vote on Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Templates at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/WikiProject Templates. User:Stevertigo created the WikiProject and then did nothing further. I have now started to turn it into a real working WikiProject, and I would appreciate it if you would reconsider your vote. BlankVerse ∅ 4 July 2005 20:18 (UTC)

If Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Templates was deleted by User:Stevertigo, how did it reappear? I didn't create it, even though the edit history currently thinks that I did. I swear that I looked at the edit history just before I started editing it and it showed Stevertigo's creation, and your adding of the tfd tag. The only thing that I can think of is that Stevertigo deleted it at the same time that I was editing it, so that when I saved my changes to the page it actually created a new article. (The other question is how did the VFD for the page end up falling through the cracks, where it never got deleted even though all of the votes were for deleting it.)

As for plans for the WikiProject: Template standardization is already being handled by WP:TS (although it should probably be renamed as a WikiProject), and I've listed WP:TS as one of the descendants of the Template WP. Instead, I was thinking of starting off with a big Stub-sorting WikiProject-style attack on the Template namespace, both cleaning out the deadwood, and then creating better documentation for the templates that remain. Later projects might include trying to create some sort of standardized naming scheme for templates, and writing better documentation on how to create and modify templates. BlankVerse ∅ 4 July 2005 21:19 (UTC)

For categories, there was someone who had created a program that built "trees" of categories starting from some arbitrary starting point. I can't remember who it was, but look through the Talk page for the Japanese regional notice board and you will probably be able to find a message about a tree that user created for everything under Category:Japan, and there should also be a graphic (and text version?) of the tree that was upload to the Misplaced Pages. BlankVerse ∅ 4 July 2005 21:41 (UTC)

CSDs

I think rewording the RPG one is fine, but I wonder if we really get enough of these in VfDs to make it worthwhile. The Dell-Vikings article (the new one) doesn't mention media coverage at all, and it doesn't mention any of the band's albums (just some singles). A strict reading of the criteria would allow this good article about an important group to be speedied. For that matter, the Johann Sebastian Bach article doesn't mention media coverage or albums, either :-) Pburka 4 July 2005 23:24 (UTC)

I think that you're really stretching the definitions of the terms you're using. A top hit is media coverage? Then why does WP:MUSIC contain criteria 1 and 4? Aren't they redundant? And a book counts as media coverage? Not according to mass media. You're proposed criteria allow articles to be deleted which clearly pass one or more of WP:MUSIC's 7 criteria for inclusion! Criteria for speedy deletion need to be more strict than criteria for inclusion. Pburka 5 July 2005 13:06 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Precedents

Excellent job, and an excellent choice of location for the page. I hadn't referenced the Precedents page for a long time because of the mess it had become. Now it is a very useful reference page. Although it was already linked to from the "See also" of the Guide to Votes for deletion, I thought it would be useful to link to it from the main VfD instructions, so I did. Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 5 July 2005 02:20 (UTC)

CSD stuff

What? Um, Netoholic, I don't mean to intrude (but since I was one of the voters on the page and this is a wiki after all) but I think Radiant's move made it more like that of the majority. It was an attempt at consensus. And I think you're the only one who opposes it. As one of those whose vote was "tampered with," let me just say that the change makes lots of sense to me. Chill, dude. --Dmcdevit July 5, 2005 09:14 (UTC)

I have to concur with Netoholic. Unless Radiant's tampering is reversed, the policies passed in this round will not be legitimate and I will be the first to call for a revote after the one month period. — Phil Welch 5 July 2005 10:27 (UTC)

As one of the few who opposed Radiant's VfA, I have to say that he has come a long way. He put a lot of time and dedication into the CSD Amendment. Last I checked, we were all asked to assume good faith. While his change of the wording wasn't optimal, there can be no doubt that he was doing it in good faith, notifying everyone who might have been affected. This is further evidenced by the fact that he sought a fair solution in a constructive discussion with Phil and implemented it immediately, although it must have been quite a bunch of work. — Sebastian (talk) July 6, 2005 03:51 (UTC)

Proposal I1-B

Radiant, I want to thank you for attempting to address my concerns on the image deletion proposal. Unfortunately, I have found myself concurring with the GFDL issue that several others have raised, and find that I am still strongly opposed to this speedy criterion, but now for entirely different reasons. Such is life, I guess. Dragons flight July 5, 2005 18:30 (UTC)

User:Who Welcoming

Hi there! Since this seems to be a frequently asked question, would you mind adding a link to Misplaced Pages:Merge to your welcoming template?

I don't mind at all, how does this version look User:Who/W1? I wasn't sure about the wording. <>Who?¿? 5 July 2005 18:32 (UTC)

• Here's a few that I have found, of course theres the standard ones other than welcome like welcome2, welcome3, etc.. listed on the welcome committee page.
• User:Neutrality/Welcome (borrowed mine from here)
• Template:Sj-welcome (although this one should be userfied)
• User:Alphax/Welcome
• User:Imaglang/Welcome
• Template:CJwelcome (another that should probably be userfied)
• User:Howabout1/welcome
• User:Plato/Welcome
• User:Defunkt/WelcomeMessage
• User:Jfdwolff/Welcome
• User:Andrevan/welcome
• Template:LDSWelcome (Latter Day Saints welcome message)
• User:Rdsmith4/Boilerplate (not sure if they copy/paste this or just example)
• User:Sam Spade/Welcome

<>Who?¿? 6 July 2005 18:24 (UTC)

Hey

You know, I find it rather insulting that simply because you disagree with a proposal, you add an extra vote to it that basically proclaims the proposal to be a piece of crap. This is something that people spent quite some time on over the past six weeks, and just because you don't think the situation is 'broken' doesn't give you the right to decide for everyone else that they may not try to improve it. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 20:57 (UTC)

I'm sorry to see you taking it that way. I made it plain from the start that my view is that, firstly, there is no problem and secondly, expanding CSD would result in loss of good articles. Now I didn't realise we'd got to the stage of voting until yesterday, so of course I looked down the list of proposals to see where any of my proposals had been included. None of them were (I suggested the VfD deferral method, and also the proposal that has now become proposal Z.)

Now I believe it's correct to say that you were the person who assembled the final proposals. I have no problem with that, you do a fairly good job. However you're not the only editor on Misplaced Pages and others are quite capable of adding proposals. I've added my own only because you for no doubt excellent reasons of your own didn't add it.

What my proposal says, and I quote, is "The deletion process isn't broken, no need to fix it by extending CSD. Instances of instruction creep, of which this is one, should be resisted." It doesn't say the ideas are "a piece of crap" at all, but (and I say this because it's my opinion) that we don't need to do this stuff and it could be a bad idea to try. What am I going to do, sit on my hands because someone else might be offended? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 21:12 (UTC)

• You can oppose all you want; in fact, from the moment you stopped participating in the discussion the thought occured to me that you would oppose any such proposal (even if I never understood why you would object to a proposal to codify common practice). However, the proposal Z is a prime example of WP:POINT. Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 21:31 (UTC)

I am shocked. My friend, do you really believe that I intend to, or have done anything likely to, disrupt Misplaced Pages? Is that how you interpret my--I assure you--completely good faith statement that I do not believe that the deletion process needs to be mended because it isn't broken, and that those suggestions that I have seen appear to me, in all honesty, to be ill-conceived, unlikely to succeed, and possibly may cause damage? This is my belief. You claim that I "stopped participating", well actually no I just had a few other things to do for a few weeks--I have a family, friends, a job and other commitments, as well as several other things to do on Misplaced Pages and one or two other online forums.

At least you admit that you did realise that I'd oppose any proposal likely to arise from the discussion. Well I was fairly forthright about this. It isn't a crime, it isn't disruptive, it's the way things are done on Misplaced Pages. We express our points of view. WP:POINT would be an act of disruption. I don't do that. Please reconsider and I'm sure that you'll see that this is a mistaken accusation on your part. It is possible for someone to disagree with everything you say without disrespecting you--and that is the situation with me. It is possible for a person to express a point of view you don't agree with, without disrespecting you, and that is the case with me.

Please reconsider your--I assure you--completely unfounded and wrongful accusation. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 5 July 2005 23:26 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for trying to explain things to Noitall while I was on vacation. Your help is much appreciated. I tried to give him my perspective on his talk page this morning, but I don't think he gets it. Sadly, CfD is a great place to make enemies. Thanks again! --Kbdank71 6 July 2005 15:01 (UTC)

Rfm

Didnt really pay attn to the vfd, but a better case for tfd would be simple underuse (just like WP:RFM). For VFD to call an rfm's one or two templates "instruction creep" is a bit out of hand IMHO, considering how much "instruction creep" vfd inherently carries. -SV|t 6 July 2005 18:39 (UTC)

List of new categories

Posted at User:Radiant!/new-categories-2005-06-23 (303k). Sorry it took so long. Good luck getting the category system into shape! -- Beland 7 July 2005 01:31 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks for the effort. It's a lot longer than I thought, too. I would like to give this a try for awhile, and it would help if there was a new list every now and then (preferably weekly, but less would also work). I'd appreciate it if you could take care of that (or bot it). If possible, could you leave out the list of deleted categories at the bottom (since I'm not going to go through that anyway), and any categories that had already been deleted since creation (that are now redlinks on the list)? Yours, Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 11:13 (UTC)

I just realized that this may be because of articles that link to a category, without the category page actually existing. That would also explain such things as ]. I believe a bot could be employed to automatically remove those (esp. as 'whatlinkshere' is unable to find them) and most of them are some kind of typo. I also note that some categories are on there twice (and checking their history, they do not appear to have been deleted - e.g. Category:Arizona). Would you know why that is?

Anyway with this list of samples, I think the project would be feasible with some help. So I'll go and recruit some people from WP:VP. Yours, Radiant_>|< July 7, 2005 13:09 (UTC)

Categories with {{{ and }}} in the names don't actually exist; they are artifacts of the link-finding system which are caused by parameterized templates that put articles in categories. "Category:{{{year}}}_songs", for example, might show up because of the way Echoes (1950 song) uses Template:Collaborative pop song. I haven't gotten around to implementing parameter substitution yet, sorry. Why some categories are listed twice, I don't know, but it's probably a bug in my code.

Removing red links could be done by a bot, but it'd probably be faster for a human to just upload, look for red links, and remove them manually. That would also introduce a lot less load on the database servers.

It would be nice to have actually-weekly database dumps, but I'm not a developer. I did just post to Misplaced Pages talk:Database download; perhaps bringing these issues to the mailing list or IRC would be fruitful.

Personally, I will shortly have to go on a Wikivaction for a few months to find a new job and move across the country, so I might not be around to provide you with updated lists even if there are new database dumps. If you look at http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/, you'll see en_categorylinks_table.sql.gz. A fairly trivial script could convert this into a plaintext or wikitext listing of categories in the dump. This is the database's understanding of the category tree, which due to minor bugs is slightly inconsistent with actual articles (but consistent with what you would have seen had you visited the category itself at the time the dump was produced). On the other hand, it solves the template transclusion problem. You should be able to run diff (Unix) or csdiff (Windows) on these lists to get what you need for your project.

For better or for worse, I'm sure there's several months worth of work even for a team of dedicated, active volunteers, just to fix already-identified problems in the category system. (See Misplaced Pages:Categorization projects (current).) -- Beland 8 July 2005 04:13 (UTC)

RFC certification

Please don't be so trigger happy with those RFCs. You went on and deleted the RFC on a couple of abusers just because I (or anyone else) forgot to move them out of their section. Users Mir Harven and PANONIAN have both acknowledged the RFC, it's obvious from the page that you had deleted. --Joy 7 July 2005 12:36 (UTC)

I agree that we were a bit tangential there, but we did agree with reference to the gist of the issue. I'll clean it up. --Joy 7 July 2005 12:51 (UTC)

I finally found the template :)) I'll fill it out. The attempts to explain basic ideas to users have been met with silence, deleting of comments from the talk page and continued obstruction of articles. This is really borderline vandalism, the RFC procedure assumes people not walls... :( --Joy 7 July 2005 14:02 (UTC)

Mel and I Have Been Working Hand in Hand

• If you take a look at the second archieve and current Talk:Tsushima Islands (T:TI), or (especially in my case) 'His Talk' (hopefully archieved now Look for June 13th-20th+), Mel, James, and I have been nurturing (?) the individual in question (and Mediating w/others in direct contention) which the RFC affected not at all.
• One problem was that Mel was buried in finals, and it's not clear how to present to ArbCom how disruptive an individual that fails to understand (or won't admit it) an arguement which undercuts or demolishes his line of reasoning, and keeps coming back with the same point. You really needn't dig too deep, just review the discourse on T:TI between the 2nd—5th of July, primarily with User:Hermeneus.
• Bottom line, whether it be 'immaturity and lack of training' on 'acceptable' proofs (sources) and 'chains of reasoning', or stubborn adherence to POV, or a 'learning disability', or some other form of 'dementia', the sad fact is the guy cannot be moved on an issue without Herculean effort and application of Jesus-like patience (I can't think of a pantheistic god that fits the bill). One editor has stated in an email that he gave into him out of 'fear', and leans more to the demented theory, versus the too young and immature theory of underlying cause. It's hard to seperate those however, from the individual who has decided to be adamantly 'Political POV' stubborn.
• My long range hope is that we can get Jimbo Wales and ArbCom to wake up and see that some teeth need to be put into mediation (binding), RfCs on individuals (graded menu of outcomes, i.e. discipline measures), etc., simply because of the demoralizing effects of working with persons like this. Wiki would not enjoy the bill were I to present one for the hours I've put into the matters influenced by this single individual! I believe personally that this sort of nonsense accounts for why 4 of 5 Admins go inactive or marginally active— and only God knows how many good 'editors' get scared off from making greater contributions. (See some other suggestions: Fire Retardant on combating flamewars in the general sense. I try not to critcize anything without a constructive suggestion or three in my pocket!)
• Lastly, when such behavior is rooted in POV, rather than inability, you get the same kinds of messy unproductive time quagmires as you see on the Sea of Japan Vs. East Sea controvery on the Dispute on Village Pump, and that too needs a better policy, as much of the world has avery different view of the world than we who live in the First World do, and many of the flamewars past and extant can be pinned on that cultural perspective; this sort of dispute is only likely to grow larger over time, as my post on the Village Pump addressed.
• Thanks for looking in. FrankB 7 July 2005 13:52 (UTC)